The present invention relates to the use of a double sided adhesive device comprising silicone gels for adhering substrates, especially a medical prosthesis to a human or animal body.
Silicone pressure sensitive adhesives (PSAs) and tapes containing such adhesives are known in the art and many are commercially available. Typically, silicone PSAs comprise condensed blends of silicone fluids and silicone resins. When used as tapes, typically such silicone PSAs are applied as thin coatings (e.g., <0.1 mm) on one or both sides of a carrier material.
It is likewise known in the art to use silicone PSAs in medical applications. For instance, it is known to use silicone PSAs to adhere transdermal drug delivery devices and medical prosthesis to patients.
Silicone PSAs, however, can have a number of properties which limit their use in medical applications. For instance, the adhesive strength of silicone PSAs is often so great that a patient's skin or the object to be adhered can be damaged on removal of the PSA. Additionally, silicone PSAs often exhibit cold flow properties at skin temperature. As such, the resultant inflexible layers of PSA can be very uncomfortable on the patient's body. Finally, silicone PSAs often delaminate from the carrier leaving a coating of the PSA on the skin and/or the object to be adhered. Not only is this a cosmetic problem, but it also limits the ability to reuse the adhesive.
Silicone gels are also known in the art and described, for instance, in WO95/22997, WO96/09076 and EP300,620. These gels have been used, for example, as dielectrics, vibration dampers and in medical therapy for cutaneous scars or injuries (e.g., abrasions, surgical areas or burns). In this latter use, the silicone gel is in the form of a sheet with one tacky surface for adherence to the patient's skin and one non-tacky surface to inhibit undesirable adhesion to the gel (e.g., the patient's clothing).
We have now discovered an adhesive device comprising silicone gels which can be used, among other things, to provide a comfortable and convenient method for adhering a medical prosthesis to a human or animal body.